A war without end

In an interview with ABC TV on November 9, 2019, US Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Miley has predicted that US troops would remain in Afghanistan for several more years to add to the 18 years they have already spent there. He reminded us that Washington sent troops to Afghanistan because the country was used as a base to launch the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US. The deployment had one clear objective, the General continued, and that was to ensure that Afghanistan would never again be a haven for extremists to attack the US. The mission, he said, is not yet complete, is ongoing, and has been ongoing for 18 years. In order for that mission to be successful, the Afghanistan government and security forces are going to have to be able to sustain their own internal security to prevent terrorists using their territory to attack other countries, especially the US. The General's 'minimalist' description of the US 'mission' in Afghanistan is a far cry from the ambitious talk of 'nation building' that accompanied the early years after the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Wisdom dawned slowly as the following years proved the US was barely able to fend off a burgeoning Taliban insurgency, what to talk of nation building, a concept in any case questionable through the agency of a foreign occupying force. Not only that, it is also far removed from US President Donald Trump's oft repeated desire to extract US troops from an unending war. For that purpose, Trump had authorised direct talks with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, starting from September 2018, a tortuous and long drawn process that finally seemed to be on the verge of a breakthrough a year later when Trump abruptly cancelled a meeting in the US with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and the Taliban after a series of Taliban attacks killed US and NATO soldiers. However, in late October 2019, Trump sent peace negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad back to the region to explore restarting the collapsed talks. That ongoing effort has yet to yield any tangible results. It seems the US is now holding out for a Taliban ceasefire or at the very least a reduction of violence to improve the atmospherics for a re-engagement.

Meanwhile Pakistan's foreign secretary and the head of ISI visited Kabul on November 11, 2019 for discussions on a host of issues that have recently increased tensions between the two uneasy neighbours. The issues involve, amongst other things, the Afghan complaint that their Ambassador in Islamabad was summoned to the ISI headquarters and the personnel there violated diplomatic norms and principles. Pakistan has its own set of complaints of the harassment of the officers and staff of its Kabul Embassy at the hands of Afghan security and intelligence personnel. Fencing of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border has also ratcheted up tensions and even led to exchange of firing and casualties, both civilian and military. The discussions in Kabul appear to have had a positive outcome as both sides agreed to set up technical committees to sort out these issues and some minor ones such as a dispute over an Afghan market in Peshawar. While Pakistan and Afghanistan wrestle with managing their relations, keeping them on an even keel and preventing conflict, the shadow of a seeming war without end looms over their heads as well as those of the region and the world. Pakistan-Afghanistan relations, historically tense, need to be kept within acceptable confines to prevent the likely and ever threatening spillover of the violence in Afghanistan into Pakistan, a prospect that brings the lack of a resolution of the US's longest foreign war into sharper focus.